By Dr Jeremy Koay
A limited view
Conversations are generally thought of as casual informal chats which are primarily used to build rapport. However, conversations can take place in a more formal context and can have a variety of purposes, including persuading, demonstrating expertise or...
By Dr Jeremy Koay
A limited view
Fluency is often associated with the ability to perform a task quickly, smoothly and effortlessly, as Jiang (2016) summarises. However, this aspect of language should not be considered in isolation from other aspects, such as topic familiarity, vocabulary and the...
By Dr Jeremy Koay
A limited view
Viewing politeness as a universally accepted norm is an incomplete or even misleading understanding of the concept. In fact, research in the early development of politeness theory, such as that of Brown and Levinson (1987), has been criticised for its lack of...
By Dr Jeremy Koay
A limited view
The central tenet of speech act theory is the idea that humans use language to perform a communicative action, such as to greet or invite someone, or to offer something (Searle, 1969). However, traditional approaches to language teaching tend to focus on...
By James Jenkin
As I mentioned in my previous post, there’s little evidence for the widespread view that Chinese students don’t like speaking in class. In fact, a number of large-scale studies (e.g., Littlewood, 2001, 2010; Kim, 2006) show students from the PRC question...
by Dr Jeremy Koay
A LIMITED VIEW
Let’s start by observing the following scenario. A student asks her teacher to repeat his instructions. The student said: Excuse me, Mr Li. Can you repeat again? The teacher responded: You shouldn’t use again after repeat. Not...